Certain heat sinks use pumps to pump a cooling material through a portion of the heat sink overlying a heat-generating source. The cooling material absorbs the heat generated by the heat-generating source and carries it away from the heat-generating source, thereby cooling the heat-generating source. Pumps used to transmit the cooling material through the heat sink are operated at maximum flow rates.
Cooling materials transmitted along channels used in these heat sinks generally suffer from excessive and non-uniform pressure drops. The pumps used to circulate cooling materials, already overworked to pump the cooling material at high rates, require even more energy to account for these pressure drops.
Heat sinks made according to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/612,241, titled “Multi-Level Microchannel Heat Exchangers,” filed Jul. 1, 2003, require numerous semiconductor processing and assembly steps. While providing enhanced cooling capacity, these processing steps likely increase the cost of the heat exchanger. The benefits afforded by these processing and assembly steps may not be warranted by the added costs of manufacturing.
Accordingly, what is needed is a structure and a method of efficiently manufacturing a heat exchanger that provides for uniform pressure flows for the transmission of a cooling material.